


Power (And Those Who Lack It)

by xaviul



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Body Horror, F/F, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-28 04:46:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16716830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xaviul/pseuds/xaviul
Summary: You’d been left with nothing in a way that had made you always hungry for what you had been without then, at 10 sweeps- power. Security, the knowledge that you wouldn’t be brought back to the helming institutes, so they could do what they had planned on from the moment they had realized Helm 440521-013 had an improper installation. Never again would you worry that you’d be hauled on to an exam table, wonder if they’d even bother wasting anesthesia on you before they brought down the knife.And once you’d gotten that, you had just wanted more. But, you muse, that’s the trap of power- you get the taste for it and you get greedy for it. Vaikne had never had a thirst for it, still content to be led no matter what you did to encourage her otherwise, but that just gave you more reason for it. The higher you rose, the higher you could pull the trolls that mattered with you. No matter what you had to do to climb your way up.A moment of reprieve between two moirails.





	Power (And Those Who Lack It)

**Glitch | 14 Sweeps | Nott Terminal | 1,616 Words**

“Come sit, Glitch.”

The life of a bruiser was hardly ever glamorous, no matter how many suits you wore or makeup you put on. Some nights just your presence was enough to remind trolls of their obligations to QPIN, and others… Sometimes the brutality of your species was needed, to put trolls back in to their place. And you had never shied away from what it took to get a job done right.

But it meant some nights were like tonight, when you came hive bedecked in gore and had to head directly for the ablutionblock to wash the tacky and dried chrome from your skin. There was a weariness in your bones, the beginnings of a headache trying to start behind your eyes as you stepped under the spray, but the warmth of the water did little to relieve either ache. Still, you stood under the water until it started to go cold before you drew yourself from the trap and in to the robe waiting for you on the rack.

Your hair, weighed down with water, pulled against the ground as you left the block, drawn towards the smell of cooking- and to the sound of your moirail’s voice, waiting ever so patiently with the hair comb at the kitchen table.

Vaikne is one of the only trolls you know that could give you an order like that that doesn’t chafe at you. And that’s why you cross to her to take a seat in the offered chair, leaning back as her fingers work in to the curls. The buzz of her psionics between your horns is a familiar note as she uses her telekinetics so carefully along the strands. Pulling the excess moisture from them as well as smoothing out any knots, it’s the sort of work that you could never do. But Vaikne had always had superb control over her limited telekinetics, and she worked over your hair in silence.

You know it’s part of how she shows she cares for you, appreciates you. It’s about the palest thing you both do, when she does your hair and reassures herself that you’re back and in one piece. Sometimes you feel bad, that her life revolves around your own like Alternia does the sun, that if you did never come hive one night she would be left adrift. The same as she had been the night you had killed Boneslit and found her hooked up to his systems, running his numbers.

No, not the same. The first perigee she’d done nothing but spit out numbers at you while you had tried to help her remember what it was to be more than a program- now she’d have your savings, your hive. And if she would get out more, she could have more. If you were actually that pale for her, you would encourage her to.

But you put that familiar guilt to bed as she pulls the comb through perfectly-tamed hair, gathering it up off the nape of your neck to put it in to a loose braid. You’re not sure how long the silence has lasted, but it finally breaks as she weaves the plaits in to place. “Your wire looks like it’s growing again,” she tells you, as matter of fact as a troll can be. “Down the main piloting port. You’ll need to take a night off to see the mediculler.”

“What a bother,” you sigh as your hand raises up to search for what she saw. You could feel the discomfort, under the other pangs of your body. The feeling of wire threading through the muscle and skin in ways it was never supposed to. The cobwebbing of it down your spine always needed monitoring, a quick eye for new growths past the usual unfortunate presence of it all.

And yet, if it wasn’t for that pain, you’d be strung up in some highblood’s ship, like they’d always had planned for you since you had broken shell and made it through your trials. In return for what you had now, for the possibility of the future you wanted for yourself, you could take the warping of your body as the biowire tried to take more and more of it over.

It just meant a visit with Ullane, perhaps a slip under the knife to hack away at more of the tendrils. They were like a hydra, always growing back, but as long as you could keep chopping them back and keeping them at bay… Well. Your back had been ugly to you the moment it had been filled full of metal and wetware. Every new scar was something you’d just grown to accept with the sweeps.

You reminded yourself of that as your fingertips trail over the raised ridge of the new growth, and Vaikhe steps back from you. “Is always something, no? Will ask Ullane when she’s available for an appointment. Always so busy, that girl. But so talented.” You drop your hand, long claws ghosting over the overgrown port that would have once connected you to a ship before you tip your head back to watch your moirail.

All of her motions now are hesitant, as soon as her self-given task of caring for you was over. Some nights just seemed harder for her than others, trying to navigate the world as an individual once more, and the pettier side of you wishes you had made Boneslit suffer just a bit longer, just for her. And if that wasn’t pale, well. It was close enough for you.

You were two trolls cast in to the wilds, your sense of selves stripped away so that the core of you could be used by those that society had blessed with power. Everything you had now, you had earned yourself. Had clawed and hit, threatened and persuaded for until you had accomplished something that you had never thought possible as a wriggler- stability. Your job would always be dangerous, and most trolls on the street would mark you as a psionic. But despite that you had earned yourself the warning that most trolls didn’t want to mess with you, enough respect that most trolls around you treated you as more than just a yellowblood, and a plan to only go up from there.

You’d been left with nothing in a way that had made you always hungry for what you had been without then, at 10 sweeps- power. Security, the knowledge that you wouldn’t be brought back to the helming institutes, so they could do what they had planned on from the moment they had realized Helm 440521-013 had an improper installation. Never again would you worry that you’d be hauled on to an exam table, wonder if they’d even bother wasting anesthesia on you before they brought down the knife.

And once you’d gotten that, you had just wanted more. But, you muse, that’s the trap of power- you get the taste for it and you get greedy for it. Vaikne had never had a thirst for it, still content to be led no matter what you did to encourage her otherwise, but that just gave you more reason for it. The higher you rose, the higher you could pull the trolls that mattered with you. No matter what you had to do to climb your way up.

“You have that look on your face,” Your moirail’s voice cuts across your thoughts, pointed enough that you look back to her. She has two cups of tea in her hands to set on the table, but her eyes are focused on you, brows drawn in just so as she fiddles with the handle of her favorite cup. “What look?” You ask as lightly as you can, a parody of innocence as you pull your cup closer. Your eyes look for the pot of honey, a momentary scan, but she catches it and the pot skitters over from the counter in a flurry of grey sparks.

“I moved it to clean,” she explains, as if there’s a need for her to. You give a soft noise of affirmation and hope that’s enough for her to realize that as you wand out a ribbon of golden honey in to your tea. “And you know the look, Glitch. It’s the one you get when you’re thinking about getting in to trouble.” The phrasing, along with the accusation they held in them, gets a peal of laughter from you, lips curling up in to a rare smile as you raise your cup.

“Trouble, me? Would never. Trouble implies there is something wrong about what I am doing, and I always work within the right Vaikne. Do not worry about me, was simply reminiscing.” Even as you speak, you can read the doubt in her eyes, the tightness of her lips as they purse. You can read her like an open book, but just as always, she never voices her feelings. In a moment they retreat, and you drown your sigh in a mouthful of tea.

Things weren’t perfect for the two of you. It was possible that perfection would always be something that taunted you just out of reach, beckoning you on to chasing it up until the end. Somehow, the thought was still a comfort after all these sweeps, even though you were no longer the lost little reject scrap that had fought so hard just to survive. Every night you thrived more, and like the biowire that tangled in your flesh you were determined to strengthen and spread yourself higher.

But unlike your wire, there would be no scalpel to cut you away. You would make sure of that.


End file.
